‘Jesus Fuck. Ow. Bollocks.’
June is shouting for someone to help her. Meera grabs the key and turns it, opening the door. As she does so, and pulls herself and June through, Half-Swan springs from the bushes, hauling himself along by his hands, shoving his way inside with them. He slams the door shut, turns the key in the lock and makes off with it, dragging himself away into darkness.
‘Christ, what is keeping him alive?’ asks the shocked Miranda. She turns to June, who has fallen in beside her. ‘There’s got to be another way out.’ She looks at the torn and bleeding Meera. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
‘I fell out of the building, all right? We need to find Howard.’
‘Why?’
‘Let’s just find him, okay?’
Clarke walks Ben ahead of him, goading him with the razor-sharp tip of his cricket bat. ‘This is what happens when you leave your workstation unattended.’
‘Have you seen what’s going on down there?’
‘What’s the matter, Mr Harper, are you afraid of a little hard work?’
‘It’s not the work that bothers me, it’s the mass psychosis of a building filled with deranged, homicidal maniacs.’
‘That’s the trouble with people like you, Harper. There’s always an excuse.’ He swings the bat at Ben’s throat, and somehow manages to pin him to the railings by the handle. He produces a huge roll of silver tape and starts taping Ben up.
‘You killed Felix,’ says Ben, dumbly.
‘A little man trying to hold back a big industry. People like him – people like you – don’t deserve to survive. I bet you don’t even vote.’
‘Why did you hide his body in the air-pipe?’
‘To infect the others.’ Met with an uncomprehending stare, he sighs and explains. ‘From the day I started work, I just wanted to do my job well. After thirty years of late nights and no holidays, I became a supervisor. I had no friends, no woman, no life, but it didn’t matter. I sacrificed everything for my employers. Then along came Mr Draycott …’
… Clarke studied Draycott, hating his crisp, white shirt and gym-toned chest, hating the cool, young new boy with all the answers in his report. He raised his cricket bat, and his righteous anger did the rest.
Disposing of the body was a bit of a fag, though. He had to drag, shove, fold, drop and bend Draycott to get him inside the grille, ramming him through to the steel shaft below. As the body landed with a slam, his employment papers drifted down after him. Moments later, the air-con system started up. That, of course, was the problem right there …
‘Don’t you think I knew my days were numbered?’ Clarke hisses at him. ‘All I ever wanted was a little respect. A little acknowledgement. Was that too much to ask?’
Now completely taped up, Ben is stuck at the top of the stairwell. The worst thing is having to listen to his supervisor play the sympathy card. ‘I can see how you feel,’ he says carefully. ‘If you don’t have a job in this country, people treat you like shit.’
‘They treat you like shit if you do,’ warns Clarke, somewhat mollified. ‘When I come back, I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate your contract.’
14. FRIDAY 3:05 PM
June, Meera and Miranda are keeping an eye out for Half-Swan, who has scuttled off again. They round a corner in the basement and find Howard in his deckchair, smoking dope and listening to the Chemical Brothers on his iPod. He smiles and peace-signs them.
‘Hey guys.’ Howard wants to high-five, but nobody’s in the mood. Half-Swan is sitting on top of a tool cabinet above him, poised to drop and attack. His colon is hanging below his shirt-tails.
Meera yanks Howard’s headphones off, pulling him backwards. She and Miranda drag Howard clear into the next room as Swan throws himself at the flimsy door, hammering it hard.
‘Don’t you know what’s happening up there?’ asks Meera.
‘Holy Jesus Mother Of God! What the fuck was that?’
‘Mr Swan,’ says June. ‘The top half of him, anyway. He’s kind of dead but he won’t lie down.’
‘No shit. Oh man, I warned you. No pain receptors, your brain keeps functioning as long as they tell your heart to keep beating. I fucking
‘How did you know?’ asks Miranda.
‘Oh fuck.’ Howard looks sheepish. ‘You’re looking for someone to blame, it’s me. I designed the SymaxCorp system.’
‘You?’
‘Yeah. I started when I was still at school – didn’t come out of my room for about three years. It was all theory, of course. Dr Samphire found me and made it happen. I ran it through every conceivable scenario, then pointed out the potential problems. He had some ideas of his own about those. He wanted to keep me where he could keep an eye on me. One of his little jokes; the whizz kid becoming the janitor. I don’t mind it down here. It’s cosy.’
‘I thought the directors were to blame,’ says Miranda, disillusioned.
‘Yeah, right. Most of them couldn’t find their own dicks with a microscope and tweezers. A profound lack of imagination is the only quality you need to rule the fucking world.’
Half-Swan slams himself at the plywood door, nearly breaking through.
‘How’s he kicking the door without any legs?’ June wonders.
Miranda looks around. ‘Is there another way out of here apart from the front doors?’
‘This isn’t like one of those
‘Come on Howard, there must be something!’
‘Well obviously there’s a rubbish chute, but you can only get to it from the atrium, ’cause that’s where they take the recycling stuff.’
‘We can get there.’
‘The tunnel’s full of rubbish.’
‘We can clear it.’
‘And it’s welded shut.’
‘I thought you designed all this?’ Miranda accuses.
‘Don’t rush me,’ says Howard. ‘Somebody roll a joint while I’m thinking,’
Ben comes to. He’s tied to a wheeled desk chair with rolls of parcel tape. His mouth is taped. Perhaps Clarke wants to keep him alive as a sympathetic ear? He tries to move the chair, but it’s at the top of the stairwell flight, and one false move will send him to his death.
There’s a loose end to the tape. There’s also a trolley ramp on the first flight of stairs. Ben manages to fix the tape around the stair-rail with one hand. He kicks back. The chair tips down the stairs, spinning on its stem as the tape unravels. But it rolls too fast, shooting off the edge of the staircase and over into the stairwell. The tape pulls tight as he falls.
Ben and chair are yanked back, to hang suspended in space by the attached tape.
Miranda, Meera, June and Howard back away from the door, which is being violently battered and is splitting in half.
Howard points ahead. ‘There’s a cable tunnel that goes as far as the lobby, but it’s not very wide.’ He eyes June as he speaks. ‘I don’t know if she’ll go through.’
‘At least try – we’ll deal with the supervisor.’ Miranda looks like she’s been waiting for something like this all her working career.
‘If you guys are sure,’ says Howard, uncertainly.
‘He hasn’t got any bloody legs, Howard, all right? We can manage.’
Howard can’t wait to get out. He takes June with him. As Miranda and Meera barricade the breaking door, a dark shape shifts behind them. They turn around to find Miss Fitch in an alcove, chopping up documents on an old- fashioned paper-guillotine. She must have been there the whole time. She’s smoking hard and slugging vodka from
